Lives in Literature. Compiled by W.B. Gooderham.

I am a sick man…I am an angry man. I am an unattractive man. I think there is something wrong with my liver. But I don’t understand the least thing about my illness, and I don’t know for certain what part of me is affected. I am not having any treatment for it, and never have had, although I have a great respect for medicine and for doctors. I am besides extremely superstitious, if only in having such respect for medicine. (I am well educated enough not to be superstitious, but superstitious I am.) No, I refuse treatment out of spite. That is something you will probably not understand. Well, I understand it. I can’t of course explain who my spite is directed against in this matter; I know perfectly well that I can’t ‘score off’ the doctors in any way by not consulting them; I know better than anybody that I am harming nobody but myself. All the same, if I don’t have treatment, it is out of spite. Is my liver out of order? – let it get worse!

I have been living like this for a long time now – about twenty years. I am forty.